Ep. 175: "Backwards at Half Speed"
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Merlin: This month, they invited the Nerdologues to help me say hi to John.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Ack.
Merlin: Ack, it's Monday.
Merlin: Ack.
Merlin: Mondays.
Merlin: Those three letters made me laugh out loud.
Merlin: I hate Mondays.
Merlin: I hate Mondays.
Merlin: Irving.
John: I am face down in the lasagna.
John: Oh, no.
John: So I was sleeping in my box and Odie came and danced on my head.
Merlin: Odie.
Merlin: Odie.
Merlin: More like odious, am I right?
Merlin: My daughter likes Garfield because he's lazy.
Merlin: Oh, really?
John: That's her spirit animal, I think.
John: My daughter also likes Garfield.
John: Unclear why.
John: Doesn't get the jokes.
John: Wants me to read Garfield to her.
John: I have the entire Garfield collection, as you can imagine.
Merlin: I mean, not the entire one, but every... All those little rectangular softcover boxes.
John: All the ones Jim Davis published from 78 to whatever.
John: I used to love Garfield when I was a kid.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: He was amazing.
Merlin: He was, for his time, somewhat subversive.
John: Shucky Darn and Slop the Chickens.
John: Shucky darn and slop the chickens.
Merlin: I just introduced my daughter to Bloom County.
Merlin: I read her one Bloom County and she really liked it.
John: There's a lot going on in Bloom County.
John: There are a lot of messages.
Merlin: Yeah, we're at a very awkward age because I expose my daughter to a lot more media, I gather, than you do with yours.
Merlin: But we're getting to a point where there's more stuff that she can watch, but she's not going to get a lot of the jokes.
John: Right.
John: Like the jokes in The Godfather and Godfather 2 are very, very like they're not really played for laughs.
Merlin: No, that's true.
Merlin: But two that I keep thinking about, they're not entirely appropriate for a kid her age.
Merlin: But the main reason I hold off is that she won't get the jokes.
Merlin: One is Young Frankenstein.
Merlin: which i saw at a fairly young age it's not entirely age appropriate but it is it is still one of my favorite funny movies it's amazing but she does not unlike our generation she was not she is has not been steeped in universal monster culture right or or like classic black and white oh no your your daughter has more experience of like the the the great the grand era of cinema but like the tropes that
John: The tropes that that movie was mocking.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Well, yeah, definitely.
Merlin: I mean, I think she knows like what a Dracula is, but she's not.
Merlin: It wasn't like, you know, that was everywhere when we were kids.
Merlin: But also like she loves Marx Brothers movies.
Merlin: But generally, like most kids, if something's black and white, she's like, what is this broken thing that we're watching?
Merlin: This is weird.
Merlin: But then the other one, which I watched most of again last night, is Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Merlin: I think I'm going to give that one a couple more years.
John: Yeah, there's a lot going on in there.
Merlin: Yeah, and it goes by pretty quick.
Merlin: But, you know, she has a flair for enjoying absurd humor.
Merlin: But, you know, I think it's worth waiting.
Merlin: I think it's the best practice to wait until your kid is probably ready to get why it's funny.
John: Yeah, there was I mean, we were exposed to a lot of movies and media from the 40s, 50s and 60s when we were kids because there just wasn't that much.
John: media yet and when they were searching around for something to put on the late show it was like well we've got we've got these movies and so we watched them as though they were
John: also part of our culture, right?
John: I mean, even in the mid-70s, it still was... I watched a lot of 50s sitcoms as though they were... I knew they were old.
John: Yeah, like I Love Lucy type stuff.
John: Well, yeah, and Leave it to Beaver.
John: I mean, those were on in the afternoon.
John: But also, like, I got introduced to 60s editorial cartoonists
John: by finding old playboys and old playboys had a lot of the lot of the people writing drawing the cartoons the one panel cartoons in those old playboys were also doing cartoons for the new yorker you know they were they were um at the time of course playboy was was could attract the best writers so um
John: Like, what's his name?
John: Cahill Gahan.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: I know who you mean.
Merlin: Oh, damn it.
Merlin: The guy with the – he draws the really crazy-looking creatures.
Merlin: Not Cahill Gibran, but Gahan.
Merlin: Gahan, yeah.
Merlin: Gahan Wilson.
John: uh it's well you know this is the problem with being if only there was some place to look i'm gonna say gay hand wilson gay hand wilson right uh so he so like his cartoons were in playboys that i would find under a board in the forest
John: which is where you used to find Playboys.
John: Well, people don't remember the boards.
John: If you were out in the woods and you saw a piece of plywood... There was always porn in the woods.
John: Yeah, you'd go lift up the plywood and maybe there'd be a Playboy or maybe there'd be five Playboys.
Merlin: They were like mushrooms, just cherry magazines would just grow in the woods.
John: That's right.
John: So then you'd open it up and after you had seen the naked ladies, then there was... What else was there to do?
John: These were... You would pour over these Playboys trying to figure out, trying to decode...
John: adult culture.
John: And there were all these great cartoons and all these reviews for hi-fi stereo systems and sophisticated political talk.
John: Guys in swim trunks smoking cool cigarettes.
John: Smoking cool cigarettes in swim trunks.
John: Like outside on the deck.
John: There's so much of that.
Merlin: There's a lot of decks.
John: So by the time Bloom County came around
John: I had already read quite a bit of Nichols and May style 60s political commentary.
John: And I understood the language a little bit or the references.
John: Because Bloom County was making a lot of references to Nixon and all this stuff.
John: Even though that wasn't even his era.
John: I don't know, era mashing.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, I think I only feel the need to middle-age explain this because there are people that may not, well, not that they should care, but the thing to be aware of is there was a time when whatever was on TV is what was on TV.
Merlin: You didn't get to pick when it was on.
Merlin: You didn't get to decide what it was going to be.
Merlin: So my daughter can watch.
John: I love that there are listeners who are like, hmm,
Merlin: I never considered that.
Merlin: You have to keep it in mind.
Merlin: You have to remember that there are people now who are 30 years old that have never had a CD except as a gift.
Merlin: That's like a thing.
Merlin: People have not been buying a lot of CDs for 10 to 15 years and it's crazy.
Merlin: Anyhow, so all I'm saying is that in this case, the total catalog of what was available was much more narrow.
Merlin: There was a lot more of that long tail like old stuff.
Merlin: I mean I can't say how many times I've seen like Bob Hope and Bing Crosby movies.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Stuff that at that time was 20 to 30 years old and is now, what, 60 to 70 years old.
Merlin: Think about it that way.
Merlin: It's pretty crazy.
Merlin: But like you just see monster movies all the time.
Merlin: You have creature feature and all that kind of stuff or just all the Arthurian stuff that is the basis, much of the basis for Holy Grail.
Merlin: I don't think she's as steeped in that.
John: I don't know if she ever will be or if my kid ever will be.
John: I had a really interesting conversation with a millennial person who was a person of great intelligence and goodwill.
John: And I asked what I thought was kind of a simple question, which was like, who would you say were the handful of members of your generation who...
John: admire the most or who you think are representative of your generation culturally and she said what do you mean and i was like well i mean exactly that like there are people of your generation who are doing cool things and and uh when i was 22 i knew a lot of i mean i could tell you who the the five
John: prime movers were in establishing a beachhead of our voice in adult culture.
John: Who's doing that for you?
John: And she was like, I don't know, Jon Stewart?
John: And I was like, no, no, no, no.
John: I mean people of your generation.
John: And she was like, well, Jon Stewart is of our generation.
Yeah.
Merlin: That's not true.
Merlin: He's older than me, I think.
John: Well, right.
John: And what she meant was kind of, I think she was describing, and it really was a language.
John: We had a language gulf that we struggled to surmount.
John: Because what she was saying, I guess, was that because now all media is everywhere all the time and everything is equally accessible to everyone.
Merlin: You don't really have the same term.
Merlin: It's almost like you asking her, like, what's your favorite Victrola?
Merlin: She'd be like, I don't even understand that question.
Merlin: There's not really a thing for that.
John: From her standpoint, as a smart 22-year-old,
John: Like I said, well, what about Taylor Swift?
John: And she was like, well, that's pop music.
John: That doesn't matter.
John: Or that's...
John: she was laying claim to everything that was being made now, regardless of who was making it.
John: And so Stephen Colbert was contemporary, and so therefore of her generation.
John: It was of now.
Merlin: It's more like it came out recently, so it's part of my generation.
John: Right, right.
John: And in a sense, like in 1986...
John: Like Peter Gabriel, his record was really big and we would have said Peter Gabriel was popular music now, but Peter Gabriel wasn't our generation.
John: We wouldn't have laid claim to him.
John: We would have said, I'm a Peter Gabriel fan, but it wasn't until people our age started making things that we had that sense of ownership like this now belongs to us.
John: But she couldn't identify with that
John: And I'm not sure – I mean it's a sample set of one, this conversation.
John: But it was very interesting to see, at least in this person, that even the idea that the first one or two people of your generation that made it into the mainstream were even if you didn't like them.
John: they still were your emissaries.
John: And maybe it's because people of her generation have been on TV her whole life or there are too many to count or Vine.
John: I mean, it was very hard for me to even... Because she kind of turned the tables on me and was asking for clarification in the sense of...
John: Describe what it was like to have...
John: that feeling of your, of, of a generational, um, like what having four or five people that you felt were your generation in the media.
John: I was like, yeah, kind of.
John: I mean, there was not Tabitha Soren.
John: I mean, the first time that somebody, the first time that I turned on the TV and saw someone that was my age on TV right now, who wasn't a kid in a sitcom, um,
John: but was like a young person speaking in their own voice in mainstream media.
John: It was like, wow, look, I'm consumed by a feeling of total envy and fury at this young person for being more successful than me, but also I'm so excited, like,
John: It's one of us there on the news team.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, I don't know.
Merlin: I don't have enough knowledge, reference, or context for what's happening right now to even know what to compare.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: But I don't know, for some reason, what sticks out in my head is what I now realize, you know, like we talk, people talk a lot.
Merlin: I was talking about like, you know, the whole music thing, the way that CDs were kind of actually an anomaly, that it was extraordinary how many CDs sold up until 1999.
Merlin: And, you know, a lot of people inside the music industry thought that was a trend, that that was going to keep going.
Merlin: Various things happened.
Merlin: But, you know, the truth is that, you know, music is always sold, but it never sold anyway, like the way music sold in the 90s.
Merlin: So, I mean, now we look at that and go, oh, that was actually an anomaly.
Merlin: And now I think about, like, the mid-'80s.
Merlin: And I don't know if it was just me and my punk rock, you know, brain, but, like, I remember feeling just so strangled by, like, six recording artists that were just everywhere.
Merlin: Like Madonna, all the obvious ones, right?
Merlin: Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince.
Merlin: I mean, I like Prince, but, like, by, you know, 1985, I really had enough Prince at that point.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But it was Whitney Houston.
Merlin: It was just everywhere.
Merlin: I mean, Madonna was everywhere.
Merlin: And now I'm trying to say to myself, well, is that kind of what it's like with Taylor Swift now?
Merlin: Because I don't know.
Merlin: I'm not sure that it is.
Merlin: No, I don't think so.
Merlin: The formula has changed.
John: Because there were only three radio stations or whatever that we could listen to then.
John: And now...
John: If you were a teen who liked the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, you would never have to listen to anything else.
John: You could get into your mom's car and you could say, plug in my music.
John: And then if you were a bratty teen, you could say, mom, only play my station when we're in the car on our way to and from school.
John: And you could limit your exposure and it would feel like
John: freedom and choice and feel like, um, feel like you were curating your own existence and you could just listen to the music you wanted to.
John: And the, and, and that is what the media companies, not the, not the, um,
John: not the record companies, but it's what Apple and the tech media companies have been selling to us for a long time, that we are now liberated and we can curate our feed so that it only contains things that give us pleasure.
Merlin: Are you talking about your social graph?
Merlin: I'm going to curate your social graph.
John: Curate your social graph.
John: But the problem with that is, of course, that you and I and people in olden times, in ye olden times, were exposed to a lot of stuff involuntarily just because –
John: it was all that was on.
John: It was all that, you know, and, and, and that, uh, and that kind of like, Oh God, I just want to watch TV and all that's on right now is twilight zone.
John: And so I'm going to watch it.
John: And then you realize, Oh, I wouldn't have chosen to watch this because it, uh,
John: It didn't have anything that seemed to appeal to me at first.
John: But now, having watched it out of boredom and frustration, having watched it out of the fact that it's the only thing on, now I realize it's brilliant and it's opened me up to all this stuff that I wouldn't have been exposed to.
John: And now you don't have to do that.
John: Nobody does.
John: And it's not just young people.
John: Like people my age can...
John: can and do and consider it a gift and a prize to be able to never, ever, ever, ever be exposed to something that they didn't choose in terms of music unless they decide to spin the bottle one day and just put on the – change the settings on their –
John: their music program so that it's no longer the, the built to spill channel, but now it's the, the Mariah Carey channel just to see what happens.
John: I mean, and I think, so I think that there are still just as many Jimi Hendrix fans as there ever were, but nobody's hearing about mountain.
John: Because nobody puts Mountain in as the band on their Spotify.
John: Everybody puts Jimi Hendrix in.
John: Nobody puts the James Gang in.
Merlin: Yeah, or Jim Dandy.
Merlin: Like one of those bands where you go, oh, that sounds a lot like stuff that I know.
Merlin: Oh, that's who does that song.
John: So I feel like the...
John: The world still contains as many multitudes, but unless it comes up in the algorithm, like, yeah, we were stuck in a world where Madonna and Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel and Prince were all there were.
John: But I remember going to college and discovering, really discovering Exile on Main Street, which for whatever reason, when I was in high school,
John: I listened to Sticky Fingers, but I hadn't gone down the Stones rabbit hole quite like I did later because my friends were mostly listening to metal.
John: And so the Stones were a little – the Stones and the Beatles were a thing that I and a couple of other guys –
John: kept as our secret little world in our larger culture, which was listening to Accept.
John: Let's be honest.
John: We were listening to Triumph and Accept and...
John: And the forebears of that stuff, like Steppenwolf, you know, like Steppenwolf being an earlier iteration of Accept.
Merlin: No, I don't disagree.
Merlin: Or I mean, like what, maybe Deep Purple?
Merlin: Deep Purple, tons of it.
John: That was our party music.
John: And the Stones were separate from that, and that was kind of a secret world.
John: But anyway, Exile on Main Street just didn't
John: uh didn't make its way to me until my freshman year in college and i remember diving into that record and feeling like i had discovered a whole world and oh my god what was that what have i been doing with my life i'm wasting my life not listening to this album and my roommate who grew up in san francisco
John: was like, oh my God, if I never hear that record again, I would be fine.
John: And I was like, what are you talking about?
John: And he was like, oh, we just used to listen to that record every, I mean, I've listened to it a billion times.
John: Growing up in San Francisco, Exile on Main Street was just everywhere.
John: And so he was already, I mean, that record was 15 years old at the time, and he already felt like it was just used up.
John: And I couldn't believe that he and I could be so alike and such good pals that I was hearing this thing for the first time.
John: And I just wanted to sit there with him and share in it.
John: And it was dead to him.
John: He couldn't hear anything wonderful in it anymore because he'd been listening to it since he was 10.
John: I'm not sure what my point is.
John: You know, I've never said that on this program.
John: Never.
John: I don't believe I have ever said I'm not sure what my point is.
John: Maybe you just don't remember.
John: I am so groggy.
John: Yeah.
John: You've been traveling a lot.
John: Well, I have, but the grogginess is...
John: I don't know what's going on.
John: When I came home from my trip, I opened my front door and my house smelled funny.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: That's a thing.
Merlin: That's totally a thing.
John: I didn't know what it was.
Merlin: You can't smell your own house, what it really smells like, unless you're away for a few days.
John: But it was an additional on top of normal, smelly... My house smells like me, but this was something else.
John: And it was just sickly sweet enough that the question...
John: did something die in the fireplace flu was in play, but it also could have been that, you know, um, that my kid dropped an apricot and it rolled under the, it rolled into the heating vent.
Um,
John: Or it could have been that somebody spilled some cough syrup on the furnace.
Merlin: Oh, it's nice to have a little bit of milk between the couch cushions.
John: That's a favorite of mine.
John: Right.
John: But it wasn't like a rotten milk smell.
John: It was something else.
John: And I'm wandering around.
John: Maybe somebody's making prison hooch while you're away.
John: Well, I didn't go check under the crawl space.
Yeah.
John: But so I'm wandering around and I'm like, it smells equally like this smell in every room, which is strange.
John: It didn't feel concentrated anywhere.
John: And then I asked my, it was so weird that I asked my mom to come out to the house and walk around and smell.
John: And she walked around and was like, I don't smell anything.
John: Really?
John: So it was faint.
John: But having woken up this morning, you know, I slept in the house last night.
John: I woke up this morning and I just feel a little drugged.
Merlin: Ugh.
Merlin: Don't get me started.
Merlin: I think about it all the time.
Merlin: Well, first of all, our house is old.
Merlin: And I don't realize that our house smells old unless I'm away for three or four days.
Merlin: Or if there's nobody in the house.
Merlin: You haven't done any window activity.
Merlin: There's no walking around.
Merlin: There's been no cooking.
Merlin: And I think, I'm guessing, every house settles into a certain smell.
Merlin: You know, when it's just left still.
Merlin: And I'm saying like you've taken out the trash.
Merlin: You've done all this normal stuff.
Merlin: There's no errant apricots that you're aware of.
Merlin: But like I think a house settles into a certain smell and that smell is nigh on impossible to detect unless you've been away.
Merlin: And I can't put my finger on it.
Merlin: It's not exactly musty.
Merlin: It's not exactly gassy.
Merlin: um but but i know i i uh oh gosh i live in fear that the apricot or whatever it is going down in the heating van or like the i'm constantly checking the pilot lights because they go out really easy and it's like oh i just i don't i don't i don't want to be i just i don't want to have a freak accident especially if it was an avoidable freak accident oh the worst freak accidents the worst right i mean there's only so much preparation you can do for a freak accident and that's what makes it a freak accident
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: Exactly.
John: I think about freak accidents now in a way that I never thought about them before.
John: Freak accidents.
Merlin: Yeah, like in The Omen.
Merlin: Remember, was it in The Omen where the guy goes back, either at Megiddo or whatever, and he goes back to get the knives?
Merlin: I'll never forget that scene where the giant sheet of glass...
Merlin: Remember this?
Merlin: It comes swinging through the air.
Merlin: Something happens.
Merlin: Something happens.
Merlin: It hits the thing.
Merlin: The brake moves.
Merlin: This thing shifts just a little bit and totally cuts his head off and his head rolls down the glass.
Merlin: That's like a canonical freak accident to me.
John: Totally freak accident except that one was actually staged by Satan.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Now we know.
John: We know now.
John: Just leave the knives.
John: Yeah, leave the knives.
John: That's right.
John: Don't go back for the steely knives.
John: They just can't kill the beast.
John: When I would hear that song, I still always think of the knives from the omen.
Merlin: Oh, interesting.
Merlin: Now I will.
John: This is like remembering your friend when you drink from the water fountain.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: Those are the steely knives of Hotel California.
John: I love that drum fill.
John: They're the Steely Numps from the Omen.
John: And I made that connection, I think, the first time I heard the song and listened to it.
Merlin: This would be the song Hotel California by the Eagles.
John: By the Eagles.
John: Which is 40 years old.
John: Are you making a ROTL playlist right now?
Merlin: Yeah, an R-O-T-L-R-I-Y-L.
Merlin: Recommended if you like 40-year-old songs.
Merlin: That's the part that's amazing to me.
Merlin: When I think about something like watching the Flintstones as a kid, which I think most people our age did, because it was on a lot.
Merlin: Yabba-dabba-doo!
Merlin: Yabba-dabba-doo!
Merlin: And the Flintstones would be on, and it...
Merlin: But it seemed hopelessly, hopelessly old.
Merlin: It just seemed like that cartoon style was so weird.
Merlin: And but so then I do that thing that I do and I need a name for what this is called.
Merlin: But that, you know, the time from this to that is yes, exactly.
John: Right.
John: Is there is there no we do that so much.
John: Is there no term of art for it?
Merlin: I don't know the answer to that.
John: The Flintstones was as far away from me in 1975 as X is from us now.
Merlin: I want a name for that.
Merlin: I want a website for that.
Merlin: But in this instance, what I'm saying is that I was watching the Flintstones when it had only been 10 years since it came on.
Merlin: That's incredible.
Merlin: And now it's been over 40 years since that happened.
Merlin: is the thing right and so i mean 10 years that seems like a lot maybe not i mean never mind was 20 what 25 years ago 24 24 years ago so that's the kind of thing yeah i used to think that like what so what is it like for example you take uh synchronicity that's 1983 yeah so that's 30 32 years
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: Yeah, and so 32 years before that was the Korean War.
John: Synchronicity.
John: Yeah, that is bonkers, but it's not – this is the conversation I had with the girl.
John: We were so –
John: That protraction, that generational geometry really meant a lot to us at the time.
John: And partly it was because a lot of what we were consuming in the 80s was through the eyes of baby boomers who were nostalgic for their own youth.
John: I don't think there was ever a generation that was more nostalgic for their youth than baby boomers in middle age.
Merlin: And they had a lot to be – not good reasons necessarily but at least a large tonnage of things to be nostalgic about because they were also one of the first generations.
Merlin: Like they always say – what is it they say in America?
Merlin: Being a teenager didn't really exist until like the Revolutionary War.
Merlin: It wasn't really a thing until the 20th century and it wasn't a market until the 40s and 50s.
Merlin: So people were making a lot of things for them.
Merlin: There were cool toys.
Merlin: There were TV shows.
John: There were movies.
John: Right, and it was all happening at somewhat of a dawning age of technology.
John: So a lot of, like, my older brother, who was a full-on baby boomer, you know, he was there, he remembers his first TV.
John: He was there to see Howdy Doody and Roy Rogers and black and white television.
John: And so all of that stuff...
John: And whether or not he felt his childhood was innocent, it certainly was more innocent than his teen years, right?
John: I mean, that was at a time when you didn't question the government still and so forth.
John: And so they were – when we were teens, those people were in their 30s and 40s and they were ironically in some ways but also just pure in a –
John: nostalgically consuming their youth media.
John: And so we were too –
John: And there was a real sense even at the time for me that like the adults are this far away from their childhood and one day I will be that far away from my childhood.
John: Except my childhood I will be consuming not only Scooby-Doo, which was the – and Scooby-Doo even was kind of a rerun –
John: But what the hell was the media of our childhood?
John: It was all reruns.
John: But, you know, no, like eight is enough or something.
John: Not only will I be remembering that, but I will also be remembering my childhood through the media of this generation before me.
John: And so we were conscious of that architecture.
John: And now we really want to think about the young people today through that same lens.
John: And they don't.
John: And that architecture is gone for them.
John: So here we are like, that was 30 years ago and this is 30 years from now and that was 30 years from then.
John: And the 24-year-olds are just like, they don't even, they can't picture what's inside our minds because they don't have the same basic building blocks.
John: And so we're just left like, and the thing is when I play that game with baby boomers, they're like,
John: Kind of not interested either because they see themselves as the beginning.
John: Right?
John: In 1955, when they were sitting down to watch Howdy Doody, there weren't Errol Flynn movies on TV.
John: Or if there were, that was very much like...
John: their dad but there was a whole new there was media being created for them on an hourly basis and it belonged to them right so yeah we're just here we are just at sea again Merlin our whole conversation just always ends up depositing us back on this strange lily pad of like generation X nobody cares about it except generation X and we care about it so passionately
John: and we can't get anybody to share with us.
Merlin: Well, I think I'm making this up right now, but I think part of it is that, I don't know if this is exactly generational or just coincidence, but I think, I have a feeling that people who are around our age grew up at a time when we realized it was important that in order to understand
Merlin: what we can potentially call our story.
Merlin: To understand about ourselves, we have to find other people who see that there's a story and kind of agree on what the story is.
Merlin: I don't know if that was always the case.
Merlin: I'm not sure that's entirely true today.
Merlin: I mean, it's easy enough probably to find somebody who can get on board with whatever your thing is nowadays.
Merlin: And I just think, you know, I wonder if part of it is that, you know, I wonder if a lot of us missed certain windows by not having found people where we could agree on what the story was.
Merlin: I wonder if that's been easier or more difficult over time or even if it's a thing.
Merlin: But I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know either.
John: And I don't know how much more fruitful –
John: The wondering is going to be.
John: I had a dream.
John: I had a terrible dream last night.
John: Not really terrible, but I was with a group of people, members of my family, friends.
John: We were walking.
John: I was engaged in some business.
John: Some business.
John: It was nighttime.
John: I have a map in my head of where we were.
John: It was maybe in the future.
John: And someone said to me that I was 82 years old.
John: And I said, what?
John: No.
John: And I started counting on my fingers the decades.
John: And I was like, I'm not 82.
John: I'm still young.
John: I have lots to do.
John: uh and look you know and i'm and i can dance and uh i can look i can jump and everybody was like no you're i mean you're 82 and i was counting and i counted up on my fingers to 82 and i was like oh i am 82 story checks out but i but i was but i resisted it i resisted being 82 and
John: And then I counted up on my fingers again, and I got 62.
John: And I was like, 62?
John: All right, I can live with 62.
John: But then I wasn't confident that I had counted right.
John: And there was a lot of question about how old I was, and none of it was very...
Merlin: Well, okay.
Merlin: So what did it feel like?
Merlin: That's, that's become my question.
Merlin: When, when people are telling a dream, because in the telling of a dream, as we've talked about, when you're reciting the facts of the dream or what you remember about the dream, it's still, it's difficult to me to communicate how you felt.
Merlin: We can guess how you felt because we know the story you're telling, but in the dream, how did you feel when you were counting?
Merlin: First of all, the disbelief that you're 82, then when you counted and got 82, and then when you counted and didn't get 82, how are you feeling in the dream?
John: Well, I was checking with my physical plant and,
John: I was checking my body.
John: Is this an 82-year-old's body?
John: No.
John: No, it's not.
John: I'm still limber.
John: I'm still, you know.
John: So I was confused at this information because it didn't comport with what I knew about myself.
John: But I had that brief feeling of like, am I dressed appropriately for an 82-year-old?
John: Like, please, God, don't let me be actually 82 and wearing some kind of clown outfit that would be appropriate on – that would already probably not be appropriate on a 45-year-old.
John: On the way in today, the methadone clinic was pretty – it was pretty calm, not a lot going on.
John: But I did pass a guy who was my age and was dressed like Wieland from Stone Temple Pilots.
John: His hair was kind of spiked out.
Merlin: That's a look.
Merlin: That's a street rat look.
John: Yeah.
John: It had frosted tips.
John: He was wearing some tight pants that had a kind of that wet quality, wet waxy quality that...
John: That rock and rollers prefer to their denim.
John: Yeah.
John: Wet and waxy.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Lived in.
John: Yeah.
John: Lived in.
John: Very, very tailored.
John: And it was unclear whether he...
John: Belonged in the Delta Sky Lounge at SFO Airport because he was actually a millionaire rock entrepreneur.
John: Or whether he was sort of a 48-year-old guy who was trying to get his band involved.
Merlin: going and was... It's easier than ever to have a mix-up like that.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And maybe he was living in a Chevy Nova somewhere.
John: It was not clear.
John: But I did have the feeling of like, okay, this guy is in middle age and he's rocking a look, but it does feel authentic to him.
John: It feels like top to bottom, he's been in this look and inhabiting this look for a long, long time.
John: And so it's not...
John: So it looks appropriate and what that means is that we are now living in an age where there are going to be just as there is a Keith Richards right now who is what 70 who still is tying ribbons and feathers in his hair and is not and he and he's also a millionaire.
John: 71.
John: 71.
John: We are now entering into the era where there are going to be people in their 70s and 80s who have been rock and roll their whole lives and are going to be rock and roll all the way to the end.
John: And so they're never going to ever put on a cardigan sweater and a pair of loafers.
John: They are going to be lacing up their Doc Martens
John: all the way until they have to pay someone to help them lace up their Doc Martens.
Merlin: Oh, brother.
John: And so – or someone appointed by the state is going to be lacing up their Doc Martens.
John: And that is – You get a shoelacer ad litem?
John: I think it's going to end up being part of the – because the old people traditionally –
John: handled that transition into oldness by starting to wear loafers and eventually white loafers so they can see them in the dim light.
John: Well, is that why they do that?
John: Yeah, the dim light of the early morning when they wake up.
John: That's an adaptation.
John: They're like, oh, where are my shoes?
John: Oh, there they are.
John: White loafers.
John: patent leather loafers or whatever that that all old people ended up in but but now we have now we are we have old rock and rollers and they're never going to do that unless i mean wieland i could see in white loafers because he that's it because he's one of those guys that like yeah kind of maybe a little bit of a my own private idaho kind of look all right oh yeah
John: So, but in my dream, I still had that feeling of like, is it inappropriate for me to be too rock and roll now that I'm 82?
John: Right.
John: And I was checking myself, feeling still pretty rock and roll, but feeling like that was evidence of
John: that I wasn't 82.
John: So I guess my feelings were a little incredulity, a little panic, um, at, you know, at maybe how, maybe a Rip Van Winkle situation where what the, what happened to, uh,
John: Like, I don't mind one day being 82, but what happened to the 27 years in the middle there where I was still going to do stuff?
Merlin: You keep thinking those will go slow, but I bet they'll go just as fast.
Merlin: If and when you are, you know, God willing, if you make it to 82, you're going to be equally aghast and running out of fingers, I bet.
John: Yeah, just like, what the what?
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: So maybe it was a little bit of time travel.
John: Maybe it was some dream time travel, and when I'm 82, I will have an experience of walking with my family through some charted terrain, and I will have deja vu at the time and be like, this really feels familiar.
John: I'm so lost right now.
Merlin: This is really overwhelming.
Merlin: Oh, my goodness.
Merlin: I dreamed I lived in a sports stadium, like a football stadium, in an apartment with the landlord from my office.
Merlin: Just last night?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, and Emma Stone was there.
Merlin: Who?
Merlin: From the movies.
Merlin: Emma Stone?
Merlin: I think that's her name.
John: Emma Stone was there at your... I ran into her at the stadium.
Merlin: At your sports stadium where you lived in an apartment with your... With my middle-aged landlord from my office.
Merlin: It was nice.
Merlin: He showed me how to open the windows.
Merlin: How did you feel?
Merlin: in that dream state?
Merlin: I think I felt slightly anxious, like I do in a lot of my dreams.
Merlin: The thing is, I'm developing this new pro skill where I'm getting really good at being able to slide back into a dream.
Merlin: I'm getting better.
Merlin: I won't call it lucid dreaming, but I'm getting better after my child has awoken me at 6 a.m., being able to slide back into it.
Merlin: And I've got a whole methodology I've been working on that is really paying off.
Merlin: hmm emma stone born in 1988 yeah she's she's really funny she's funny she's cool um yeah yeah i i make myself really slow down because i realize if i wake up here's the first thing i think when you wake up from a dream and you start getting real panicky about trying to remember the dream and i think when you get too panicky and think too fast about a dream is when you start losing blocks the stuff starts getting erased right slow your roll slow it down
Merlin: Slow it way, way down and think at about – if you can force yourself to think at about one-third or one-fourth of your usual speed, you'll start remembering more things than if you just start scanning blindly over everything.
John: Right.
John: You got to ease back.
Merlin: You got to catch yourself.
Merlin: You catch yourself and you go, wait a minute.
Merlin: You sing yourself a little song and the lyrics start getting –
Merlin: The lyrics, you sing a little song in your head, the lyrics start getting filled in, it comes back.
Merlin: Imagine yourself walking backwards at half speed.
John: It all starts coming back to you.
John: I do that a lot.
John: At half speed?
John: Well, not doing it, but imagining it.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: I see differently.
Merlin: Yeah, so this is a different topic, but I'm starting to really wonder about my concentration.
Merlin: Because I've noticed that many things in life, if I slow...
Merlin: way the fuck down when I'm doing a given thing, it's a completely different experience for me.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, I'm really, really noticing it.
Merlin: I'm wondering how much stuff I just don't see because I'm moving so fast or I'm causing my brain to move so fast.
Merlin: But an obvious example is eating.
Merlin: Eating slowly is fundamentally different from eating any other way.
John: Oh my God.
John: I try, I try.
Merlin: I cannot eat slowly.
Merlin: I just, I feel like I will very easily just slip into an automatic way of doing things, writing slowly.
Merlin: I talked about this on the other show with Dan, but if I'm doing more handwriting stuff, I've started using a notebook again for stuff.
Merlin: If I make myself write,
Merlin: like cause myself to write at half of the normal speed I normally write.
Merlin: I not only write a lot more neatly, I end up, I think my brain has a little more time to come up with stuff.
Merlin: Try this, try this.
Merlin: Write neatly and at about half speed and you get a really different quality of stuff coming out of your fingers.
Merlin: So I was thinking about this.
Merlin: This is a whole new thought technology for me, John.
John: This is the major thought technology too.
John: And I think you're really onto something.
John: I did a thing the other day, a Wikipedia dive on Hemingway and was reading some Hemingway, cross-reading it while I was reading about him.
John: And I have mixed feelings about Hemingway like any thoughtful person would.
John: But what I learned was although...
John: There is this image of Hemingway sitting at a typewriter.
John: He actually wrote all those books longhand.
John: Yeah, he had like a little lap desk.
John: And then they were typed for him.
John: But you've got these pictures of Hemingway sitting in an Underwood or whatever.
John: But really he was writing longhand.
John: And when I – I wrote everything longhand until the – let's say the mid-2000s.
John: Like I had a computer and I wrote school reports, let's say, on the computer.
John: But like all my creative writing, it was all with ballpoint pen in spiral bound notebook.
John: And so, you know, you'd have that experience of like you enter into a sentence, you are writing along, you realize halfway through the sentence that you have gone somewhere.
John: Now you have to pivot somewhere
John: In your thought, you need to be able to land this sentence and you have to change somewhere along the line.
John: Your tense is changing.
John: You can go back and cross stuff out, but it's much more acrobatic.
John: to enter into a thought and then have that thought morph as you are creating it and then try and land that acrobatic move.
John: And so...
John: It was absolutely a different art form than writing on a keyboard.
John: You know, a completely different exercise.
John: Because on a keyboard, you get halfway through a sentence and you're just deleting.
John: Like, nope, nope, that's not what I was trying to say.
John: Nope, nope, nope, nope, delete, delete, delete.
John: Let's go back.
John: And then the final product shows no...
John: It shows no record of the three or four different ways you tried to get into it.
John: But you're also never obligated to just try and finish that thought or contort in midair to include what you've already written and still make the point you're trying to get to.
John: But adding the idea of then writing slowly and neatly...
John: to that which I already know and have just described.
John: I feel like that is a major thought technology, like a creative hack even.
Merlin: I think it might be.
Merlin: Well, I should stipulate.
Merlin: I bet that everybody has things like this that are different things.
Merlin: I'm tossing out a general macro thought technology is try doing stuff more slowly.
Merlin: Oh, not just limited to handwriting.
Merlin: Oh, no, no.
Merlin: I mean I am in particular saying that that's a great example of what I'm talking about.
Merlin: Eating slower, it's hard to do.
Merlin: But you know what it is?
Merlin: I mean there's a lot of things where like I am a little bit of a grumpy old man but not as much as I seem.
Merlin: I mean I don't have –
Merlin: I don't have too much objection to how other people talk to other people.
Merlin: That's not my business, right?
Merlin: I'm not here to be the police officer that tells you whether and when you should use emojis and whether or when you should use paragraphs and periods and stuff like that.
Merlin: I will say that for myself, I still treasure the moment of struggling to say the thing that I want to say.
Merlin: And just typing LMAO is not a thing I want to start doing.
Merlin: Because first of all, the first time you do that, I mean, are you literally laughing your ass off?
Merlin: Perhaps you are.
Merlin: Perhaps you are.
Merlin: And in which case, that's a terrific sentence you could write.
Merlin: That was very funny.
Merlin: I'm laughing my ass off right now.
Merlin: But it becomes awfully easy to just type those little letters.
Merlin: And again, I'm speaking just here for myself.
Merlin: I'm not trying to advocate for this.
Merlin: But I like when I write to you or I write to my wife or whatever, even just in a text, I still find myself saying, how am I going to say this?
Merlin: And how do I compactly and elegantly say the thing that I want to say and have it go the way that I want it to go?
Merlin: And I feel myself being drawn, this gravitational pull of drawing everybody into this really spazzy, like over-the-top exclamation point culture that I'm not saying I'm against it, but I want to be aware of it.
Merlin: And I want to start making sure that I really want to be exclaiming that many things.
Merlin: That I really want to actually, as a 50-fucking-year-old man, become that ejaculatory about saying, I'll see you in five minutes.
Merlin: Because maybe that doesn't matter, but I think it might matter.
Merlin: I'll leave it to other cultural commentators to decide whether that's a good or bad thing for people to grow up with that entirely.
Merlin: But I want to make myself be a little stodgy sometimes.
Merlin: I want to make myself go slow.
Merlin: I want to make myself think about what I'm about to say because if we all just ejaculate the first thing that occurs to us all the time from now on, that does not feel like a fun future to me.
Mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm.
Merlin: Can I push back on that?
Merlin: Is that all right?
John: I think that's wonderful and well put.
John: Have you discovered that LOL lol in your own personal lexicon has already morphed into –
Merlin: I've never been a fan of LOL.
Merlin: Much more frequently, especially talking to you, said the syllables LOL or LOL.
Merlin: I've always thought that's so... You don't even have time to laugh.
John: They've morphed into at least everyone I know and certainly the way I use them is just like not funny.
John: Like not laughing out loud.
Merlin: When I see ha ha ha, whose voice am I doing?
Merlin: I'm kind of maybe doing the voice of somebody in a chick publication or maybe like a donkey on Pleasure Island in Pinocchio.
Merlin: When I say ha ha ha, I read it as ha ha.
Merlin: It's the sound of a practical joke gone wrong.
Merlin: I poked you in the eye.
Merlin: Ha, ha, ha.
John: Like a braying apoplectic donkey.
John: The Chick publication is great because those were always spelled H-A-W-H-A-W, right?
John: I know, I know.
Merlin: You go to hell, Charlie Connors.
Merlin: Ha, ha, ha.
John: And then, oh, he's having a heart attack.
John: Oh, no, his ghost is leaving his body.
John: Wounded children.
John: Oh, he's sitting in front of a faceless Judgment Day Jesus.
Merlin: Oh, the drawings would be so specific and like Tom's of Finland at the beginning.
Merlin: And then by the end, it would get real degraded into just some kind of cloaked Doctor Who character standing in flames.
John: Yeah, standing in flames saying, you are headed down.
John: You had your chance, Charlie Connors.
John: I and but what that does that gives me faith that that even the like that there is that sardonicism wins out right that even even something as like dull-witted as law can be converted into into a way of conveying
John: some of the degradation of the spirit.
Merlin: You're reading against the grain a little bit, huh?
John: Yeah, but it seems like surely there are people, and I think they are probably all Facebook moms who still use lol exclamation point as like, I am laughing out loud right now.
John: Right.
John: But I feel like it has turned almost entirely into like...
John: The thing that you just sent me isn't that funny.
John: Try hard.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: Well, there's something that I you know, and again, it's like it's like the Eddie Vedder noise or the Paul Stanley scream.
Merlin: Don't start doing it ironically, because within a week it won't be ironic anymore.
Merlin: And now you just do that.
Merlin: You're talking about or all right.
Merlin: Like, don't start doing that.
Merlin: I spent 15 years going, oh, all right.
Merlin: Like I don't know why but I started doing that.
Merlin: There's a friend of the family who's a very, very sweet woman.
Merlin: She works – she's probably maybe 50-something.
Merlin: She works at a school and she's always my like canary in the coal mine for whatever phrase is about to become very noisome for me.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Well, yeah.
Merlin: Did she say that?
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: But she's always – because she's got teenage kids and she works in a school and she picks up a lot of this.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: But like I don't – maybe stuff I'm just hearing about for the first time.
Merlin: So the kids now are all doing David Lee Roth.
Merlin: No, but for example, one that now you and I use ironically.
Merlin: She was one of the first ones I heard who would say, thank you.
Merlin: Ha, ha, ha, ha.
Merlin: Paris Hilton, LOL.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: And then there's like a whole thank you culture.
Merlin: There's like a whole like when you sit around and you have your white wine and talk about stuff, just gal to gal.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: Oh, I love the view.
Merlin: I watch it every day.
Merlin: I sent you a couple panels from my all-time favorite chick publication.
Merlin: called Wounded Children.
Merlin: Wounded Children.
Merlin: Wounded Children.
Merlin: Really, it's a hell of a piece of work because you basically get from, like, there is a porno mag in the house.
Merlin: The little boy finds it.
Merlin: Satan shows it to him.
John: Oh, my God.
John: It's not letting me see it.
John: I need to.
John: I'm talking to you on Skype right now.
John: But there's this new book.
John: I'll send you a link address.
John: Where you send me the link, and then Skype says, sign in to Skype.
John: And it's just like, I'm using Skype, you ding-a-lings.
John: I sent you a link.
Merlin: See if that works better.
Merlin: But Satan is showing him the book, and the little boy sees it.
Merlin: He's obviously very upset.
Merlin: Within a few pages, he's a young man in a leather bar with gay men.
Merlin: Ha, ha, ha.
Merlin: Ha, ha.
John: Did you hear the one about the traveling salesman?
John: Open the big drawer, David, and look at the pretty book, says Satan.
John: That's your daddy's book.
John: Yeah, Satan looks very hot in this, I have to say.
John: He's very muscly.
Merlin: Here, I'll send you this.
Merlin: This is a page we should probably acknowledge.
Merlin: Enter the jabberwock.com.
John: If your daddy enjoys this book, it has to be okay.
Merlin: Yeah, where's him in the bar?
Merlin: Oh, look at him in the bar.
Merlin: I'm so high, I'm flying.
Merlin: Got any amyl nitrate?
Merlin: Sure, get a rush.
Merlin: Wow, this is where it's at.
John: Yeah, amyl nitrate is where it's at.
John: Woo!
John: I remember that scene in the fabulous Furry Freak Brothers Fat Furry's Cat comic when Freewheeling Franklin Freak
John: has a bunch of amyl nitrate capsules in the front pocket of his shirt, and some cop jumps on him, as cops were wont to do at the time, and he breaks all the amyl nitrate in Freewheel and Franklin's shirt pocket.
John: And Freewheel and Franklin inhales like 10...
John: Amyl nitrate capsules all at once.
John: And then he gets up and he kicks the cop's ass.
John: Well, it's like Popeye with spinach.
John: Very funny.
John: I wish I could send you a link to that.
John: You're not signed in, are you?
John: No, I'm not signed in.
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Merlin: I used to collect these informally, and in the fullness of time, I actually started, I cheated, and I started buying them.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: You can order them?
Merlin: Of course.
Merlin: Where do you think they come from?
Merlin: It's not spontaneous generation, bootstrap paradox.
Merlin: They start somewhere, and that's at the Jack Chick Publications Organization.
Merlin: And you can order a bunch of these.
Merlin: How do you think they end up in America's urinals?
John: I've told you before, haven't I, about my flirtation with evangelical Christianity?
John: I don't think you have.
Merlin: If you have, I don't remember it, but I would like to hear about that.
John: Well, during that era in the 80s when... Moral majority?
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: It was really the...
John: The splintering of the factions, the evangelicalism was leaving the Southern Baptist tradition and leaving the Midwestern sort of farm church culture and it was becoming Southern Californian.
John: And it was – the megachurches were developing.
John: It was blowing up in our nation.
John: And there were chick publications, it seemed like, everywhere.
John: And people were really getting into this vocal, muscular, prosperity Christianity.
John: in a way that was new and exciting.
John: And, you know, I'm not a guy that wants to see a trend happen where he's not.
John: He doesn't at least dip his toe in the water.
Merlin: No, you get your research.
Merlin: You like to know what's going on.
Merlin: You get to make your own decision, hold your own counsel about these things, but you don't want to just arrive someday and you didn't even know what the heck was going on for years.
John: Exactly right.
John: So I started watching the PTL club to see what was going on.
John: And I'm not somebody who consumes media ironically in particular.
John: Good for you.
John: Thank you.
John: There were people of our time, the Church of the Bob Dobbs crowd, who watched PTL ironically.
John: But I was watching it just earnestly, like, let's see what's going on.
John: I didn't like it, but I didn't want to be blind to what was happening.
John: And I always loved a chick comic because I love comics and you could put any kind of insanity into comic book form and I would read it – I would grab it and read it happily.
John: And I have read some – I've read a ton of insanity because it was in comic book form.
John: Yeah.
John: But –
John: I remember when I was younger and we would be walking through airports and Harry Krishna would come up and try and pin a flower on my dad.
John: And my dad would somehow like he would materialize a cricket bat out of his jacket.
Yeah.
John: And just like, no, get the fuck away from me, hippie.
John: He would just like – he would send those people packing.
John: And I remember at 8, 9, 10 years old kind of wistfully wishing that my dad would stop and engage them because I was very curious about them.
John: And my dad, when he did engage people, it was – we learned a lot.
John: I learned a lot just by dad stopping and talking to people on the street.
John: So why wasn't he talking to these fascinating Hare Krishnas in the airport who all they wanted to do was give him a free flower?
Merlin: Oh, and he – OK.
Merlin: So I see what you're saying.
Merlin: So usually he would have a conversation and you would learn something.
Merlin: Something smelled weird about this because he wasn't even giving them the time of day.
John: He just didn't even – he just gave them the Heisman.
John: And I was like, you know, my dad will stop and talk to anybody.
Merlin: Is Heisman a straight arm as a running back to get through?
John: Yeah.
John: That's good.
John: Okay.
John: People would walk up to us on the sidewalk all the time, guys in like deerstalker hats that had flowers all over their hat.
John: And they wanted to talk to my dad about some strange, you know, some like public policy.
John: And my dad would sit and talk to him for 45 minutes.
John: But these guys with the top knot and the robe and the airport, he doesn't even want to talk.
John: So I made it a policy to always stop and talk to Harry Krishnas when I got to be 18 and was moving through airports on my own.
John: If somebody came up and tried to pin a flower on me, I would stop and talk to them about Harry Krishna for enough time until they started to repeat themselves.
Yeah.
John: And I learned a lot about Hare Krishna.
John: But then they all went away.
John: Like they stopped being in airports all of a sudden.
John: They just disappeared.
John: They just disappeared one day.
John: They were in every airport everywhere.
John: And then I don't know.
John: I don't know what happened.
John: Harry Fishnuts?
Merlin: They just – Harry Fishnuts dimples paired pimples for Harry Fishnuts?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That's the Bloom County I showed to my daughter.
John: There it is.
Merlin: That's the one she thought was hilarious.
Merlin: Oh, and what the hell?
Merlin: She can't know anything about it.
Merlin: She has no idea.
Merlin: Pear Peebles for hairy fish knots.
Merlin: Oh, Opus.
Merlin: Just cough up some dough, Mac.
John: He just misheard things so hilariously.
John: He's so cute.
John: Well, because early Opus did that a lot.
John: Early Long Nose Opus before he turned into- Yeah, more like a puffin.
John: Yeah, before he turned into fat-nosed opus when he was long-nosed opus, he was always garbling things.
John: What is the term of art for that?
John: Like a spoonerism?
Merlin: A spoonerism, that's right.
John: But anyway, so then the Hare Krishnas went away, but the evangelical missionaries –
John: started to appear with their chick tracks and their, you know, the college, college church people.
John: And I would sit and talk to them for endless hours.
Merlin: Oh my goodness.
John: And part of it was, I was genuinely curious and I genuinely wanted to get to the bottom of the logical, their logical process.
John: Like, okay, explain that again.
John: Because not being raised in a Christian tradition, like, I didn't even fully understand the transubstantiation of – well, and that doesn't even apply in evangelicalism.
John: But, like, I didn't get –
John: the logic of dying for someone else's sins.
John: Even, I mean, that was all stuff that I needed explained to me and would sit and listen to it.
John: And, and I wasn't really even debating.
John: I was just absorbing and I would sit legs crossed.
John: And also I didn't want to be rude, but,
John: But like I would – in an airport, I would put my bag down and go sit over in a set of chairs with them.
John: And they would get very excited because that's probably – They got a live one.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: It's probably a thankless job.
John: And when they hook a big mouth bass like me –
John: and sit him down and start talking to him about that stuff, I would have some lively conversations with some well-meaning people.
John: And for a while, I would, I'm talking about between 18 and 19 years old, I walked around wondering about the process that I would have to undergo in order to
John: In order to become an evangelical person because I also believed in magic or miracles or I believed in transformation.
John: I believed in epiphany.
John: And so I was very open multiple times in my life.
John: I've been very open to epiphany and in the same way that you would try to conjure an orb.
John: Try to conjure an orb, but very open to, in particular, the possibility of Christian epiphany.
John: When I was walking across Europe, I was, I don't know if I ever told you this story, but I was walking along the Danube outside of Vienna and I'm walking along the dike, right?
John: The Danube is diked for much of its length.
John: And so it's an enormous river and these are enormous dikes on either side.
John: And I'm walking along this dike and I hear this voice shout out,
John: And I turn around and there's this little sort of leprechaun who is resting in the shade of like a utility box, like a big metal, some kind of water maintenance box.
John: And he stands up and he has almost a bindle on a stick, right?
John: He's got a little bag and he's got his little hiking boots and a long red beard and kind of longish hair.
John: And he's not a very tall guy, five and a half feet tall.
John: And he comes over.
John: He starts yammering at me in German.
John: And I'm like, I don't speak German.
John: And he speaks some English.
John: And he says, what are you doing?
John: You're clearly a wanderer.
John: And I'm like, I am a wanderer.
John: You are right, sir.
John: You have identified me correctly.
John: And he said, I too am a wanderer.
John: Where are you going?
John: And I said, I'm going.
John: At the time, I wouldn't tell people I was going to Istanbul because I had a policy in my heart that you do not say you are walking to Istanbul because it's too crazy sounding and you'll never make it if you say it.
John: You'll curse yourself.
John: But I said, I'm walking to Romania.
John: And he said, I am also walking to Romania.
John: Let us walk together.
John: And for three days, Bernard and I walked together toward Romania.
John: And we walked into Slovakia together and we walked into Hungary together.
John: And Bernard was amazing.
John: A wonderful man who had formerly owned, he was a ship captain who had owned a Danube ship.
John: A long boat that transacted, and he was from Linz in Austria, and he was a boat captain on the Danube.
John: But he had given it all away, given the boat away, given his house away, in order to go on a pilgrimage to Romania to discover what God had in store for him.
John: Wow.
John: He was a wonderful man.
John: And after three days of walking together, I realized that I was on a journey to Romania and he was on a journey to Romania.
John: But those were separate journeys because Bernard liked to camp.
John: Bernard did not understand not to camp in a mosquito bog.
John: There were a lot of things Bernard was learning firsthand.
John: He was older than I was, right?
John: He was 10 years older than I was.
John: But he didn't know not to camp in a mosquito bog.
John: And that was a thing that I had learned at a young age.
John: So we agreed at a certain point along the route, let's meet up again.
John: You go your way.
John: I'll go mine.
John: But we'll rendezvous again in Romania.
John: And he left, he wrote like a little map on the back of a business card and said, when you get to Romania, follow this map.
John: Anyway, it's a long story.
John: I'm giving away too much.
John: But I did rendezvous with him in Romania and we went on a pilgrimage, a Romanian Orthodox pilgrimage to a place in Transylvania where
John: where there was an icon of the Virgin who had... The icon had appeared magically on a mountaintop.
John: It was not painted by a living person.
John: It appeared.
John: And the Romanians built a church around it because it commanded them to.
John: And now the icon hung in the church and people came...
John: on a pilgrimage to this place and they walked around the church.
John: I'm sorry.
John: They crawled around the church on their hands and knees.
John: Like hundreds and hundreds of times it was part of the pilgrimage that you get there and then you crawl around this church on your hands and knees until your hands and knees are bloody.
John: Because the icon commanded it somehow.
John: And so I went on this adventure and I was so – I was so –
John: vulnerable at that moment in my life and susceptible in that moment in my life that i that i was like okay god you work in miraculous ways and i am utterly open to the possibility that this which seems bananas is uh is potentially a doorway to you that i hadn't considered before
John: Not that I believe that this icon appeared on a mountaintop, but that this is clearly animating people.
John: Your spirit is clearly animating people here to do these remarkable things.
John: What seemed remarkable to me.
John: I am newly awakened to you.
John: Like, ready.
John: Ready for the lightning bolt.
John: And I know that there have been hundreds of thousands of me's in history who stand on a windswept mountaintop and say, I am ready for the lightning bolt, God.
John: And God rarely produces lightning bolts in those situations.
John: That's not how he rolls.
John: It's not how he rolls.
John: He does not burn bushes for everybody.
John: Right?
John: Mm-hmm.
John: But...
John: Over the years, I have suspended disbelief multiple times and said, I believe in epiphany and let it roll.
John: And not even like, God, you have until noon tomorrow to hit me with some bells.
John: Like, not at all.
John: I'm like, I'm just here.
John: I am an empty vessel.
John: And so, yeah, that was...
John: That was probably the most recent time.
John: Wow.
John: And you were there and you were available.
John: I was there and I was available.
John: And Bernard was very available.
John: We neither of us had an epiphany.
John: But Bernard, after I left Romania, Bernard stayed.
John: And he fell in love with the Romanian girl.
John: And he started some kind of church himself.
Merlin: Okay.
John: Where the doctrine... You say a church.
Merlin: Was it from a ground up, you know, like an edifice or a thought technology?
John: A thought technology.
John: Bernard was very interested in helping people.
John: And he got into – he developed a practice of helping people.
John: He went back to Arad, which is close to Timishwara, and he started a group of – he started a help group, which morphed into a kind of church-like –
John: edifice not not building but like a like a thought edifice and now i'm not sure exactly what the doctrine of his group is my romanian is pretty rusty yeah um but it does have a it does have a like a like a like a
John: turn the loaves into fishes quality to it.
Merlin: I mean, there's something to ecstatic Christianity, though, where it's a little bit like punk rock, where it's one thing to really like somebody else's band, but you ultimately really want to start your own, because it's the whole idea.
John: Like, you want that to be your ecstasy.
John: Exactly.
John: And because he has a sort of central European, you know,
John: take on things but he is Austrian ultimately let that sink in his ecstatic is exactly the word he is his new church that he runs with his wife which is also like a feed the people kind of organization like I don't know I don't know what they're doing and he occasionally reaches out to me and says
John: Send us some American money because we are building a pump to pump Satan out of the water or something.
John: And I go, ah, Bernard, I could send you $50 American.
John: That would help you build that pump.
John: But I'm timid about that.
John: I want to continue the conversation we've been having for 15 years about God and
John: but I don't know if I'm ready to invest in a pump.
Merlin: Yeah, I'm not sure he'd do the same for you.
Merlin: Well, that's... You're not the kind of person who asks for pump money, but, you know, just saying.
Merlin: It might be a one-way street.
John: Well, that's the thing.
John: I mean, we are people of resource here in America, but... We got pump money.
John: We don't have as much Satan in the water here.
John: That's a really good point.
John: Or if we do, it's being filtered somewhere way upstream by the municipality.
John: Just in Flint.
John: Yeah.
Yeah.
John: So I don't know.
John: Were you ever were you ever like how vulnerable were you or not vulnerable but that that implies that implies some predation but like how how open were you to being evangelized.
Merlin: Well, I've talked about this in other places, but I was very devout at a couple times in my life.
Merlin: But that's not even the part that interests me as much right here.
Merlin: I mean, I'd be happy to talk about that.
Merlin: I've talked about it a lot on some other shows.
Merlin: What are these other shows?
Merlin: Are you guesting?
Merlin: I do podcasts for a living, John.
Merlin: You are on other podcasts besides this show?
Merlin: Turns out.
Merlin: And so here's the thing I think is interesting, though, is that it does –
Merlin: I wonder how many people come to religion or faith at the strongest point in their life.
Merlin: Because I have a feeling... I mean, feel free to answer.
Merlin: My guess is not so many.
Merlin: I think they come to religion at the less strong points in their life.
Merlin: People don't go out and learn self-defense when they're winning a lot of fights.
Merlin: And people aren't looking for an answer to life's giant questions when everything's going their way and everything's coming up Milhouse.
Merlin: So, you know, it's interesting to me, though, how...
Merlin: And no matter what you say about religion, you're going to get yelled at.
Merlin: In the last two weeks, I've said things that are a fairly strong defense of people of faith, and I got yelled at about that.
Merlin: Last week, we said—I thought I bracketed it really carefully to say I'm not really talking about religion here.
Merlin: I'm talking about religious traditions in the past.
Merlin: Still.
Merlin: Never listen to the show again because you're anti-religion.
Merlin: I was like, no, that's not what I said.
Merlin: But in this instance, I think it's interesting how at the time when you are most open to the idea of faith, it also becomes a little bit desperate because you're kind of like sitting there waiting for God to call and you're waiting for the phone to ring.
Merlin: And you're going like, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm.
Merlin: I sure would love to know that this thing that I'm hoping turns out the way I want to goes that way that becomes extended to like, I hope somebody's listening.
Merlin: I hope there's something out there because I've got this faith and for this faith to really work, you know, come on, do something, set a bush on fire or something.
Merlin: It's just interesting though, because like, uh, if God were listening, um, God would probably be unlikely to do that because then it wouldn't really be faith anymore.
Merlin: Now it's a magic show.
Yeah.
John: Right.
John: Magic show.
Merlin: The problem is like, you know, it isn't like you're having your greatest moment of scientific introspection and asking for a lightning bolt to prove that you're doing your science right.
Merlin: That wouldn't make sense.
Merlin: But just in the same way, I don't know how much sense it makes to it.
Merlin: I mean, it makes sense.
Merlin: I've done it.
Merlin: I've gone like I've done that whole like cartoon character thing of going like I will be the most devout follower in the world as long as you let me win this contest or whatever.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So I don't know.
Merlin: I do think it's interesting, though, the state of mind that brings people to an act of faith or I hate to say leap of faith is a term of art.
Merlin: But it brings you to like being open and vulnerable, however you are, you know, however you want to think of it.
Merlin: And then like what keeps you there if things stay the same or do in fact get better?
Yeah.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I think it's very interesting because I think almost everybody, if they were honest with themselves, would admit at some point they felt desperate enough about something to ask whatever to just make it better or make it go away.
Merlin: I think anybody who doesn't say that either has had a very fortunate life or is lying because we've all done it.
John: Did you ever read or are you familiar with the book A Walk Across America?
John: No.
John: So somebody gave that book to me back in the old Blue Highways Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance days when I was doing a lot of cross-country traveling, you know, the freight hopping and the hitchhiking and so forth.
John: And so there's this subculture of books about traveling across America as a young, open-minded vagabond.
John: And A Walk Across America is one of those books.
Yeah.
John: And I was hungry for it because I was doing this searching, traveling, and this was even a dimension beyond, right?
John: Like this guy wasn't hopping freights across America.
John: He was fucking walking across America.
Merlin: Oh, my.
John: And I think that this planted a seed in me that many years later produced my walk across Europe.
John: But...
John: This guy started in New England somewhere, East Coast, and he was a young hippie and he didn't know what was going on in the world and couldn't make sense of it all.
John: So he and his Siberian Husky were going to walk together across America.
John: And he was –
John: He was a pretty like sunny disposition person.
John: And he started to walk across America.
John: And rather than head west, which is what you should do if you're going to walk across America, he headed south because he was going to walk through the south and then turn and walk across America, which is like, okay, whatever.
John: You make your path.
John: I'll make mine.
John: And he walked down through Appalachia and the first half of the book is very interesting in that it's
John: I think contemporary readers would feel like he had a colonialist mindset and had not checked his privilege.
John: But at the time, he was just a young white guy who was walking through the poor south, which was still a separate island.
John: from the rest of america like a lot of undiscovered world down there sure uh and he was having all these experiences where he's being taken into people's homes and it's just a tar paper shack but they give him hospitality like he's never had before and he's marveling at the at how wonderful people are and this is in at a time when
John: There's a lot of unrest in our country and a lot of racial tension in our country, but he sees that everyone is wonderful and beautiful and so forth.
John: And I'm reading this book at the time, right?
John: I'm 18 and I'm traveling.
John: And so it's very compelling to me, not his experiences, but the possibility of having similar experiences myself.
John: But about three quarters of the way through the book,
John: He's still in Appalachia somewhere.
John: And as a reader, I'm saying, you know, this is a 400-page book.
John: We're on page 300.
John: He's only in Virginia.
John: Is he going to walk really fast across the rest of America?
John: How is he going to get across America in 100 pages?
Merlin: Oh, right, right, right.
John: He's only been to five states.
John: And so what happens to him is he gets down into the south and he has met all these southern people who he perceives to be much more genuine and authentic than his dumb middle class white neighbors from New Hampshire or wherever he's from.
John: He's had that experience that a lot of young people do in their first traveling where he's like, wait a minute.
John: These poor people are fun and beautiful.
John: What was I, you know, like the world is all upside down.
John: Right.
John: But then he's sitting in a church somewhere with his friends that have been helping him out.
John: On his trip, he goes to church with them and a light comes in the stained glass window and hits him and he has a conversion experience.
John: And no, no, no.
John: I think it's even in a tent.
John: I think a light comes in through a plastic stained glass window in a tent and he has a tent revival conversion experience.
John: And becomes a passionate evangelical.
John: And what's amazing about this book is he never referred to religion in the first three quarters of the book.
John: Or barely did.
John: And at one point his dog dies and he's very sad.
John: And now he's confronted with the idea of walking across America all by himself without even the companionship of his dog.
John: And then the light hits him.
John: And the book ends, a book called A Walk Across America, ends with him in Georgia.
John: Well, that's strange.
John: Having...
John: He'd been hit by the lightning bolt.
John: And then he decides that he's with the Gs now.
John: And it turns out that's what he was looking for, the end.
John: That seems unsatisfying on many levels.
John: It was deeply unsatisfying.
John: I felt totally betrayed by this book.
John: But he became kind of a...
John: Then he continued his walk across America in subsequent book or books.
John: To spread the word.
John: Now he was spreading the word.
John: Now he was spreading the gospel.
John: And I don't think that those books sold as well.
John: Or maybe they sold millions but only in Christian bookstores.
John: Right.
John: But that was, you know, he had an experience that I felt like maybe I was a little less credulous.
John: Uh, but, but there were many, many, many, many, many hours out on the trail where if a snake had talked to me, uh, I would have said, you are a false God snake.
John: I will not eat that apple.
John: I am, I'm in service of something higher.
Hmm.
John: But I think God decided that he didn't need me.
John: He was looking for people with other skills.
John: We're good.
John: We're good.
John: Thanks.
John: He was looking for people that understood SEO optimization.
John: John, I'm going to keep your resume on file here.
Merlin: If anything comes up, we'll – gosh, we'll be sure to leave your number with whatever.
Merlin: It doesn't really matter.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: The Lord stands and kind of there's an awkward moment, gently kind of gesturing toward the glowing door.
John: Handshakes.
John: Handshakes all around.
John: Help yourself to a free water.
John: As soon as everybody's shaking hands, there's a palpable sense of relief.
John: Like, okay, all right.
John: This interview is so.
John: So what do you think is your biggest weakness?
Merlin: God doesn't like me.
Merlin: Oh boy, that's rough.
Merlin: Can you imagine that getting interviewed by the G's?
John: That's rough.
John: Well, getting interviewed by the G's and like the G's who feels – he feels in the popular culture like he's represented as somebody who is very hungry for volunteers, looking for people with a wide set of skills.
John: And I would seem to be somebody that – I have a big voice.
John: I like to talk to people.
John: I can even convince people of some pretty questionable – You're a fast learner, a self-starter?
Yeah.
John: You know, you can self-motivate.
John: You would think he would say, you know what?
John: You are exactly the kind of people we're looking for to expand this franchise.
John: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Expanding the base.
Merlin: I mean, you're not the typical employee.
Merlin: Like, you're, you know, I think you would bring in a lot of interesting new people.
John: That's exactly right.
John: That's exactly right.
John: I have connections.
John: You know, I'm...
John: People might say, I've tried this.
John: I've tried the hamburger over there, and I didn't find it to my liking.
John: But boy, if you say it's a good hamburger, maybe I'll give it another try.
John: But in fact, no.
John: In fact, I screwed up the interview somehow.
John: Oh, man, that's a shame.
John: Maybe I – you know what it was?
John: They gave me that thing.
John: They gave me that exam.
John: If you see an employee stealing paperclips, you A, tell your manager.
John: B, ignore it because it's just paperclips.
John: C, steal paperclips yourself.
John: D, call the police.
John: And I didn't – not one of those was what I would do.
John: And so I just picked the closest thing.
John: But I feel like I'm –
John: I feel like I came – whatever it was that the test indicated about me, it wasn't what they were looking for.
Merlin: When I get a question like that, it's all I can do now to just go, really?
Merlin: Just fucking – what do you want to know?
Merlin: Like what are you trying to trick me into saying at this point?
Merlin: Am I supposed to come up with E?
Merlin: The actual answer is E. Now I'm an innovator.
Merlin: Am I supposed to like check your grammar on it?
Merlin: I hate it when I get homework from my kid's school that has grammatical errors.
Merlin: It just sends me down an emotional flight of stairs.
John: You're telling me people at your daughter's school send you stuff home and it has grammatical errors?
Merlin: My wife and I disagree on this.
Merlin: I think they get a lot of stuff off the internet and just print it.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But like the other day, my daughter is about to start her homework.
Merlin: And you know the typographical mark where you do a two-ended arrow to say switch these words around?
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: She had already copyedited the headline.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: My daughter, my seven-year-old daughter got a typo in the headline and fixed it.
Merlin: I was like, that'll do, pig.
John: That'll do, pig.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I can't get my kids to read the instructions.
Merlin: I am a big instruction reader.
Merlin: I'm a manual reader.
Merlin: I will never play.
Merlin: I will very rarely play a game, even a game I played before without going back and rereading the instructions.
Merlin: I forgot.
Merlin: I told you this about a year ago when I was playing chess with my kid.
Merlin: I forgot about all kinds of shit with chess.
Merlin: I forgot about en passant.
Merlin: I forgot about, you know, queening.
Merlin: I forgot about the rook move.
Merlin: I forgot all that stuff because I haven't played chess since I was a kid.
Merlin: Now, wait, did you know all that stuff by those names at the time?
Merlin: Well, I mean, I knew when you play chess with anybody who plays chess, they eventually tell you this stuff after they give you the switcheroo.
Merlin: And they go and they do the trick on you.
Merlin: Hey, how'd you move your castle with your dude?
Merlin: How'd you do that?
Merlin: And you go, it's called the rook switch or whatever.
Merlin: Castling.
Merlin: Castling.
Merlin: Rooking.
Merlin: These all sound like things you get in a whorehouse.
Merlin: Ooh.
Merlin: You get a good rooking.
Merlin: You get a good rooking.
Merlin: You get an en passant.
Merlin: I'd like to get castled in it.
John: It's called docking.
John: All right.